Replication Material for "Fighting the Disease or Manipulating the Data? Democracy, State Capacity, and the COVID-19 Pandemic"

1 Information

Authors: Carl Henrik Knutsen and Palina Kolvani
Date: September 29, 2023
Contact email: palina.kolvani@stv.uio.no

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 2 File overview

 2.1 Data files

Main_dataset_Covid_Democracy_State Capacity.dta - dataset for main analyses 

Figure1_left_dataset.dta - dataset for producing Figure 1 (left panel)

Figure1_right_dataset.dta - dataset for producing Figure 1 (right panel)

Robutstness_checks_Covid_Democracy_State Capacity.dta - dataset for robustness checks 

 2.2 STATA do-files

Main_analysis_Covid_Democracy_State_Capacity.do - contains code for main analyses

Figure_1_code.do -  contains code for producing Figure 1

Robutstness_checks_Covid_Democracy_State Capacity.d0  - contains code for robutsness checks

 2.3 STATA version

All data analyses in this article were carried out using STATA 17.0 SE—Standard Edition

3 Main data sources


3.1. The Economist

Data on official and excess mortality in Table 2 was obtained from the Economist (https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-the-economist-global-excess-deaths-model). The data (for models until end of September, 2021) was downloaded on 16.11.2021.
"official100k" corresponds to "official_covid_deaths" variable (official COVID-19 mortality rate  per 100 000), "excess100k" variable to "estimate" (after filtering of cumulative measure of excess deaths).

"diff100k" was calculated as the difference between excess and official deaths per 100 000.



3.1. Wang et al. data 
Data on official and excess mortality in Figure 6 was obtained from Wang et al. (https://ghdx.healthdata.org/record/ihme-data/covid_19_excess_mortality) based on 10 March 20202 update.


"ihme_off_rate"  is the official COVID-19 mortality rate per 100 000,  "ihme_excess_rate" is excess mortality per 100 000 and "ihme_diff100k" is the difference between excess and official deaths per 100 000.


The two datasets were merged with the V-Dem dataset (version V11.1), together with additional control variables from Bosancianu et al. 2020 (https://wzb-ipi.github.io/corona/ based on July 2021 update).


For robustness checks, the data from the Economist until December 2021 was downloaded on 22.04.2022, the data on excess mortality from Our World in Data was downloaded on 02.05.2022 (https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data/excess_mortality)


Original data files and code for merging are available upon request.



